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[IN] [FRA] STRUCTURES’ – to build secure and digital commons
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00:00Bonjour, nous allons commencer, bon après-midi en France, bon après-midi en Indien.
00:08Juste avec mon ami Charad, nous voulions savoir un peu de vous.
00:12Je peux vous demander à vous, combien de vous êtes entreprenants dans l'esprit?
00:19Ok, combien de vous connaissez l'indien de l'équipe de l'indien ?
00:24N'importe qui, Charad.
00:27Ok, so I'm Henri Verdier, I'm the French Ambassador for Digital Affairs,
00:32but I am a former entrepreneur and I was the CIO of the French government.
00:38And that's my great pleasure today to welcome in France my great friend Charad Sharma,
00:46who is the chair of something very important in India, an NGO called High Spirit,
00:51who did conceive and design basically the Indian stack.
00:56Most of you don't know this, but in India now, after an eight-year journey,
01:04there is an impressive platform of public service to develop companies' new services
01:10with the identity, with the payment system, with the data exchange system.
01:16And maybe we can start with this.
01:19Charad, can you explain to us a bit about what is the Indian stack
01:23and where it does come from?
01:25So the most known part of the India stack is a payment system,
01:30which is called UPI.
01:33So that is a mobile-to-mobile payment system.
01:37It's an instant payment system.
01:40You can use it with merchants.
01:42It's zero MDR.
01:44So if you pay 100 rupees in India,
01:46then the merchant will get 100 rupees on the other side.
01:49And so many, many transactions are happening in India.
01:54We do about almost 6 billion transactions a month.
02:00Today, we will do more transactions on that payment system in India
02:04than we would do in China, in South Korea, in UK, and US put together.
02:11And this payment system is just, you know, five and a half years old.
02:16It's not even six years old.
02:17And what is significant about this is that it's an open system.
02:23So you can, there are many, many players that are involved,
02:27and it is interoperatable.
02:29Some of you may be familiar with another open protocol,
02:34which is called SMTP.
02:36So if you exchange mail with anybody,
02:39then this is this SMTP protocol that allows you to exchange mail.
02:44You know, I'm revealing my age.
02:46When I started working with computers,
02:49I could send Unix mail to another person who was on Unix mail.
02:53But if you happen to be on a PDP 11 digital computer or on an IBM computer,
02:59then there was no way for me to send mail to you.
03:02So you needed something called SMTP to make interoperatable mail possible.
03:06And this UPI systems makes interoperable payments possible.
03:11But that is only one of the things that is there as part of India's stack.
03:15You also have an identity system.
03:18And so everybody in India has a 12-digit number.
03:22And they can walk up anywhere and they can put their thumbprint and say,
03:26I am this 12-digit number and fingerprint reader will be able to confirm
03:33whether that is indeed the case or not.
03:35Much like you would do on your phone,
03:38except this is a national system and an interoperable system.
03:42And there are many other things alongside this.
03:46There are open platforms for lending.
03:48There are open platforms for data sharing.
03:52We'll probably talk a little bit about that as we go along.
03:55So as Henri mentioned, these have come up in the last eight years or so.
03:59And they are fairly well deployed.
04:02So they have India scale.
04:06And so that is beginning to change the country.
04:11And therefore, it is getting attention from other parts of the world.
04:15And maybe we can elaborate a bit about something else
04:19because we are in France here.
04:21And in France, when we start speaking about public action,
04:26most entrepreneurs think that we are speaking about regulation, about norms.
04:31And the very interesting thing, I think, is that this story,
04:36which is actually I have to witness this, very impressive
04:40because you didn't mention the numbers.
04:42But actually, in eight years, India created 1.3 billion digital IDs
04:50and very often for people that didn't have any legal existence
04:54because you didn't have a global register.
04:58And then you did launch this payment system
05:01and 300 million people were bankrised.
05:05They didn't have any bank account.
05:06And now they have a bank account.
05:08And now you are organising the exchange of data
05:12with an approach that does respect the GDPR principles,
05:15but that does create value in the economy
05:19because it allows a lot of entrepreneurs to create services.
05:23So that's very impressive.
05:24And when I discovered this, I was very impressed
05:27because all this story was born in Bangalore.
05:30Bangalore, you may know it, is Silicon Valley of India
05:34or maybe Silicon Valley is a Bangalore of the US, I don't know.
05:39And in a very original, a very new approach
05:43of private-public partnership,
05:45can you explain to us a bit about this?
05:48Yeah.
05:49So, you know, India is rich in problems.
05:53There are many problems waiting to be solved.
05:56So our sense is that the best way to solve those problems
06:00is through private entrepreneurs.
06:03But to enable those entrepreneurs,
06:06it would be very useful if there are public,
06:09you know, digital public infrastructure.
06:12So this is not very different.
06:14I mean, this has traditionally been the case.
06:17Andrei, you were telling me, you know,
06:20possibly about 100 years ago
06:22where every village in France
06:24had public infrastructure related to water
06:28and other public services that came up.
06:31I did explain the great story of the Third Republic
06:34when they decided to build roads
06:36on drinking water, on trains.
06:38So in India, we said,
06:40look, what about digital infrastructure?
06:42Can we make sure that every Indian has mobile connectivity?
06:46If they have mobile connectivity,
06:48do they have a digital identity?
06:49If they have a digital identity,
06:52can they get a bank?
06:53If they can get a bank account,
06:55can they transact on that bank account
06:57using their mobile phone?
06:59If they can transact on a mobile,
07:02with a bank account on their mobile phone,
07:04then can they use this data
07:06about what they are spending
07:08or what they are earning
07:09to be able to get a loan?
07:11If they can use that to get a loan,
07:13can they use that for also getting,
07:15let's say, a COVID vaccination, right?
07:17So can they do that for government services?
07:21So in, for example, during the COVID period,
07:25government identified 800 million Indians
07:27who would get daily money
07:30for being able to buy food in the market
07:33so that nobody went hungry.
07:35So that was 800 million people
07:37who were receiving what is called as
07:39direct benefits transfer to make this happen.
07:42So the idea was that just the way
07:45physical infrastructure is important,
07:48digital infrastructure is also very important.
07:50Now, this was built by a set of volunteers
07:54and then given to the government.
07:56So it is run by the government.
07:58It is owned by the public,
08:00but it wasn't built by the government.
08:03It was built very often by volunteers.
08:06Now, that should not be a surprise
08:07because everybody here must have used Wikipedia
08:10and Wikipedia is similar.
08:14It is built by volunteers,
08:16you know, for the public.
08:17And so it's the same tradition
08:19that was being applied in India
08:21to build digital public goods.
08:23And of course, you know,
08:24because now you start to know a bit about France,
08:27we are very involved in the reflection
08:30about digital sovereignty.
08:33And I was very interested when you told me that.
08:35So the first idea was born in the mind
08:38of entrepreneurs, of companies,
08:40and that you made the observation,
08:44because I agree with you,
08:46that you cannot create big companies
08:49if you have to work within foreign infrastructures
08:53or if I may, private infrastructure.
08:55Can you exchange a bit about this?
08:58So, you know, Andrei and I have been talking about this.
09:00It's very hard to become rich
09:02when you are an Uber driver
09:04because Uber can see how much money you are making
09:07and it will find a way to turn the dial
09:09and take more of the money away from you.
09:12Similarly, when you are building on top of
09:14some of these other platforms that are there,
09:17Facebook or even Google,
09:20or even AWS for that matter,
09:22they can see how much money you are making
09:24and they can turn the dial
09:25to keep more of that money for themselves.
09:28So, in India, you know,
09:30we had this aspiration
09:32that that is not a workable system.
09:34We don't want to be a country of Uber drivers.
09:36We want to be a country of Ubers, right?
09:39And so it is very important
09:41that these new platforms that are built,
09:43they are built not to capture value,
09:46but to foster innovation.
09:48So the way you measure the success of a platform
09:51is not how much value it has captured,
09:53which is what private platforms do.
09:55You measure it by how many entrepreneurs has it unleashed,
09:59how much of innovation does it enable,
10:02and that is the model that is there.
10:05And we were much inspired by some of the work
10:08that has happened, especially on the web.
10:11You know, in our view of the world,
10:13that some of this work on the web,
10:15especially with Tim Berners-Lee and W3C,
10:19all started in Europe.
10:20And then some of the principles that you came up with,
10:23that personal data should not be shared without consent,
10:27which is what came from France, from Canil,
10:30and then became GDPR for Europe,
10:33is also a principle that we buy.
10:35We were just taking a more techno-centric approach
10:39to bring it to life,
10:40rather than a regulatory-centric approach
10:42to bring it to life.
10:43But I think the principles are very common
10:46for both of us as we go forward.
10:48I thank you for the comments about Europe and the web,
10:51because as a diplomat,
10:53when I say to the US, for example,
10:56that Europe is actually the birthplace of open standards,
11:01they don't believe me, of course.
11:03And of course, they are the birthplace
11:04of very impressive and efficient big tech companies.
11:08We don't deny it.
11:09But if you observe carefully,
11:12the ancestor of TCPIP was born in RIA.
11:15The web was born in CERN in Geneva.
11:18invented by an English guy.
11:21ADSL, Linux, Bluetooth.
11:25Because in Europe, we have this vision
11:27that a world with open standards
11:31is a better world.
11:32And in the European Union,
11:34because we are 27,
11:36we have to think a lot
11:37about interoperability between us.
11:39So, naturally, we have a tendency to promote open standards.
11:44So, thank you for the comments.
11:46And maybe with this comment from myself,
11:51we can exchange a bit about the fact that
11:54when we started this conversation one year ago,
11:57very quickly, we started to speak also
12:00about something more geopolitical.
12:03Because what Shahad said
12:05about the Indian tech ecosystem
12:07that cannot be free and prosper
12:10and completely unleashed
12:12without a form of control on the infrastructure,
12:15we can extend it to the web itself
12:18and the internet itself.
12:20Internet was born as a digital common,
12:24a public good.
12:26Everyone was a contributor.
12:29The University of Japan decided
12:32to finance the first cable to Japan,
12:34and everyone was financing routers, etc.
12:39And we are all contributing,
12:41and it was our common good,
12:43our common digital common.
12:47And now we have the feeling
12:50that there is a threat on this first internet.
12:55Actually, there are two threats.
12:56Some states who are not democratic
13:00don't really like it,
13:01these permissionless innovation infrastructures,
13:05these decentralized infrastructures
13:07that no one can completely control,
13:09these resilient infrastructures
13:11that you cannot cut.
13:13So we have some tendencies of some states
13:16in a very strong geopolitical confrontation
13:19to weaken the very first internet.
13:22And of course, you have big monopolies.
13:25They don't want to destroy internet,
13:27but they don't really care about internet
13:29because they are strong enough
13:30to finance their own infrastructure if needed.
13:33And probably it's time for Europe,
13:36for India,
13:36and for some other countries
13:38to come back
13:39and to stand for this initial vision of internet.
13:43What do you think about this?
13:44You know, digital sovereignty
13:45has become an existential issue for democracies.
13:49and, you know, this is true for European democracy,
13:54French democracy.
13:55It's true for Indian democracy
13:57because now the narrative,
13:59the public narrative can be shaped
14:01by somebody sitting far away
14:03who is not even part of your country,
14:06who is not a citizen of your country.
14:07And if you have that,
14:09then it is obviously a threat to democracy.
14:12Second is the value that is created in a country.
14:15If your innovators cannot capture that value
14:19that they have created to solve their own problems,
14:22then you have economic sovereignty that is at risk.
14:26So the question is,
14:27don't we, you know,
14:28where I think the next partnership that you will see
14:32is that rather than fighting it with legal means,
14:36we have to fight it through innovation
14:39and the best way to fight it with innovation
14:42is to actually unleash more innovation
14:45and the best way to unleash more innovation
14:47is to enable the innovators to do more
14:50and the way to have the innovators do more
14:53is to give them these digital public platforms
14:55that will allow them,
14:57many people to come in and innovate
14:59and then when they innovate,
15:01you know, be able to own
15:02the benefits of the innovation,
15:04you know, that they have brought about for themselves.
15:08And so this model,
15:09I think we can bring together for payments,
15:12we can bring together for data
15:14and data is particularly important,
15:17personal data,
15:17because personal data is the fourth factor of production
15:21as we go forward.
15:22And if we can put the right regime in place
15:25for personal data,
15:27as I think both of us believe
15:29by working together we can,
15:31then I think we would set the stage
15:34for tremendous innovation to happen
15:36from India and Europe
15:38for its own people.
15:39And if we do it for our own people,
15:41it will travel to the other parts of the world as well.
15:44So maybe we have four minutes,
15:46but maybe we can elaborate a bit
15:47about something else within what you are saying,
15:50which is a governance strategy,
15:53your vision of a techno-legal governance strategy.
15:56because if I may,
15:58when you are a lawmaker,
16:01a decision maker,
16:03very often you have a temptation
16:04to regulate through laws,
16:07bills,
16:07regulation,
16:08so in a very bottom-up,
16:10not top-down approach.
16:13And I share your vision.
16:16You have another approach.
16:17You can encourage some kind of innovations.
16:20you can favorise a common level playing field
16:25while sharing some resources.
16:28As a public actor,
16:30it's much more efficient
16:31and much more kind for entrepreneurs
16:33to give access to a clear ID,
16:37to give access to a neutral payment system,
16:40to protect a neutral internet,
16:41to share resources,
16:43or even open data,
16:45which was my former job,
16:46than developing new reglementation
16:50and new norms,
16:52et cetera.
16:52And in India,
16:53I like very much this approach too.
16:56You are trying to use both approaches.
16:59You know,
17:00and it is,
17:02the necessity is the mother of invention.
17:05So,
17:06in the West,
17:09it is very easy
17:10to have a legal recourse for something.
17:13So,
17:13if you were not supposed to do,
17:15you were not supposed to send my data
17:17to somebody else
17:19and you broke the terms of service
17:22and you did that,
17:23I can sue you.
17:25I can take you to court.
17:26Now,
17:27you can do that in India too,
17:29but the court system is so slow
17:31that it is not a deterrent
17:33like it is here.
17:34So,
17:35we needed to find a way
17:36to drive good behavior,
17:39not through courts,
17:40but through code.
17:42So,
17:42if you want to do it through code,
17:45then as technologists,
17:47you have to build systems
17:48that are permissive,
17:50but also restrictive.
17:52It prevents people
17:53from doing some things.
17:54It enables them
17:56from doing something.
17:57So,
17:57how do you know
17:58as a technologist
17:59where to enable them
18:00and where to restrict them?
18:02You can only know that
18:03if you now say
18:05what your principles are
18:06and those normative principles
18:08have to be stated very clearly.
18:10so now technologies
18:12have to be
18:12not value-free,
18:14but they have to be value-based.
18:16They have to follow
18:17the values
18:18of the society
18:19and incorporate
18:20those values
18:21into the code
18:22that they are writing.
18:23Now,
18:24this has not been
18:25the trend
18:26in the Western world
18:27up till now,
18:28but I think in India
18:29we were forced
18:30to take this approach
18:31and by taking this approach
18:33we are able to get
18:34better outcomes
18:35in places like India
18:36and what Andriy
18:38you are telling us
18:38or what we are hearing
18:39in the conversations
18:40that this has also
18:42got some applicability
18:43in Europe
18:44and the rest of the West
18:45as well.
18:46And maybe it will be
18:47my last word,
18:49a great illustration
18:50of the famous sentence
18:51code is law.
18:52So,
18:53you take it seriously
18:53and you are building
18:54a code
18:55that allows
18:56good laws.
18:58Absolutely.
18:59And laws are nothing
19:00but codification
19:01of principles
19:01and you can codify them
19:03now in code
19:04and in quote.
19:06So,
19:07that's the shift
19:08that I think is coming.
19:10And so,
19:11we have an opportunity.
19:12This is a new S-curve,
19:14I think.
19:15And in this new S-curve,
19:17the next 20,
19:1730 years,
19:18I think we have
19:19an opportunity
19:20to collaborate
19:21because we have
19:22shared principles
19:23that bind us
19:24and we can then,
19:26out of this collaboration,
19:27I think good things
19:28will happen.
19:30Thank you very much
19:31for your attention
19:31and see you soon.
19:33Thank you.
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